


Come and Put Your Fresh Face Forward

by glitter_bitch



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Body horror specifics:, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, HAROLD THEY'RE LESBIANS, Kissing, Skin, Slow Dancing, Worms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:21:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23445397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitter_bitch/pseuds/glitter_bitch
Summary: Harold, they're lesbians
Relationships: Nikola Orsinov/Jane Prentiss
Comments: 9
Kudos: 24





	Come and Put Your Fresh Face Forward

Jane Prentiss wasn’t the first flesh hive Nikola had courted, nor was it likely that she would be the last, but she was certainly the most fetching one this century. Love was a rebellion in more ways than one. 

Jane’s skin was pockmarked and torn in horrible, disgusting ways. It was a skin that no follower of the Stranger would desire, but Nikola wasn’t really a follower, now was she? She was a creation. Maybe at one point she had been a follower, back when she had been Joseph Grimaldi among others, but those days were long past. At this point she didn’t see any reason to distinguish herself from her god, not when they had the same goals, the same ends in mind, if on different timetables. The rest of the circus might not have agreed, but that was alright. Beauty was only skin deep, after all. Nikola should know- she owned several.

Besides, her Jane had a beautiful soul, one that writhed with the decay Nikola herself would never taste. The worms crawled in and out and through the soft tissues, and Nikola found comfort in the knowledge that everyone was a little different under the skin.

\---

When Jane first met Nikola, there was a sense of wrong-rightness about the whole thing. She knew in her one mind that something was wrong with this person, this thing who seemed to move differently, whose skin seemed to fit just a little too loosely around her frame. She also knew in her thousands of minds, that this was a friend, and possibly something more. They had never lied to her- they loved her. So she had let it happen.

Jane was not surprised to find out that the woman was also something else underneath. True the smooth plastic was vastly different than the mass of beings that swarmed and wriggled in her, but it wasn’t altogether unpleasant when her lips first pressed against the featureless head, cool to the touch, right where the mouth should have been.

She knew what kind of looks the circus gave her. The looks that varied from apathy to outright disgust, but she knew that her scars were her armor, that they’d never dare insult their god by skinning one so blighted. She wore them with pride.

\---

Nikola thought it was funny that even in a group of outcasts, the two of them managed to be the outcasts. She thought a lot of things were funny. She told Jane so as she twined their fingers together, sitting on the curb, waiting for the bars to empty so Jane could find someone too drunk to realize they were being infected. The clouds overhead sent down a sprinkling of rain, and Nikola lifted her face, feeling the sensation on her borrowed skin.

“They don’t like the rain,” Jane said, so the two of them stood, and walked to the alley where an overhang kept them mostly dry.

It wouldn’t take too long to find someone. It never did. Nikola had plenty of ideas to fill the time, though. Kissing was just as fun with borrowed lips as without.

\---

Jane could never dance as well as she would have liked to. Her weight was constantly shifting from limb to limb with the seething mass inside, so there was no real way to tell where her center of balance would be at any given moment. Her Nikola was patient. She always was; one had to be patient when one would never die, never decay. Nikola was solid, more solid than she should have been, and she led Jane in lazy, dizzying circles that would have made the Spiral itself jealous.

Jane wasn’t sure if it was she who closed the gap between them, or if it was her partner, but by the end they stood flush for the still, faceless audience, plastic pressing into squirming flesh. They stood there for a long time, clutching each other as though they could stop time.

\---

Nikola had always thought herself the more reckless of the two. After all, she was the one who had lost the skin for her own ritual.  _ She _ was supposed to be the flighty, capricious one, not Jane. Which is why Jane’s sudden attack on the Archives was such a surprise.

Of course she had known all about Jane’s games with the Archivist’s little assistant, but she didn’t think it would go much farther than that. And now Jane was gone. Gone and burned, and Nikola bitterly half-wished she’d been allowed to join her. Plastic doesn’t decay, but it can melt.

Nikola knew she could always wait for a new flesh hive to rise up (a new one always did), but Jane had been special. There was a feeling about Jane, one that the others before her didn’t seem to have. For the first time in a hundred years, Nikola wished she could cry.

\---

The ritual was not for revenge. Not entirely at least. Sure, she wanted to see the Archivist suffer, to see him go mad, and die slowly and painfully for killing the one thing she had loved, but it was all really his fault anyway. If he hadn’t severed her last tie to the rest of the world, she wouldn’t be quite so keen on its destruction, would she? She supposed it was funny, in its own way.

Her fingers danced across the rotary phone, dialing numbers that weren't quite numbers. It was picked up almost immediately, and a gruff voice on the other end grunted “Breekon and Hope. What do you need?”

“Breekon! Or Hope, whichever you are,” Nikola said in that cheery, chilling voice she used so often the box was close to wearing out, “I’ve just had the most  _ lovely _ idea for a get-together!”

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "Blood on YR Sundress" by Teen Girl Scientist Monthly.  
> Thanks for reading!


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